


Wooden Knives

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: F/M, Mild Gore, Orcs, Pacts, Warlocks, oh gee isn't this great there's a fucking dnd tag for new stories, suuuuper mild but I never know what's bad and what's not so I'm extra cautious, that sweet finding your own home trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 11:46:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16618382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which freedom isn't a gift, it's a prize, a war-trophy pinned for all to see, something fought for and won





	Wooden Knives

**Author's Note:**

> You know you're in deep when you write a whole fic about your PC's mother

Magda leaves her clan with scars on her hands from where she sliced them open months ago, burning with hatred and knowledge she shouldn’t have. Her binding circle had been crude, drawn with thick fingers, calloused and stomped on, clumsy clumsy fingers. Her mind was sharp though and when she bled the last to finish it, hellfire ate away the earth and a large insectoid man had pulled himself up out of it. He looked like what she thought a fairy would have. She snarled her proposal in rough but serviceable Common, still furious.  
“You have power, I want it. I can give you blood.”  
The fairy-man blinked his many glittery black eyes before a smooth smile slid in place, “No more of yours I hope”

Magda leaves her clan with scars on her hands that are new and harsh and still break sometimes, bleeding and scabbing again and again as she fights unending, she’s endured worse pain for them for them for them from them over and over and over again. She’s had scars before but these are the first she’s been in control of, the first thing where she had a say. It is a new sort of fight after that night, power dripping from her veins not to try again. Instead she gets very very drunk and sleeps for a very long time

Magda leaves her clan with scars on her hands, pink and soft and it feels so strange to be soft, even in the fear-safety of her no longer a home she couldn’t be soft. She is soft here alone in the woods with an old axe stolen from someone like her, then stolen again from her clan. Soft with nothing but a heavy tarp she’d bought on her own with a bounty she’s fought on her own.  
She considers, huddled beneath her first thing, the first she owns, as the rain pelts everything into submission, curled on pine boughs and hungry and tired but so happy and free, she considers that it might be nice to be alone

Magda leaves her clan with scars on her hands and by they time they’ve faded and calloused she considers that maybe she isn’t actually alone.  
She knows it for certain when Bee comes to her on a rare beautiful day, smile less smooth and more sincere, something small cradled in his arms, a false dragon tiny and green and perfect, “for you” he says, “you’ve done so well and come so far, a gift is customary after all.”   
When she accepts a burning grows in the back of her head and then she and Fly are one. No one speaks for the rest of the day but her patron stays until she’s asleep, gone only in the dawnlight

Magda leaves her clan with scars on her hands, it’s been years and yet she still recognizes their brand in an instant when she comes across a wandering member, he’d come after her target and while she could have sent the kill-stealer back to that clan with scars instead, there’s nothing in her history with mercy and she isn’t inclined to start now. The fight is too easy. He can’t escape for pride's sake and then she kills him with the first magic she’d ever learned, pure force flung from a fingertip crushing him easier than breathing. She sees her own strength, hard won, a lifetime in the making and she likes it.  
Bee likes it more

Magda leaves her clan with scars on her hands, she never expected to use them to raise a house, she never expected her fairy-man, her devil, her patron, her teacher her friend her lover. (Never her saviour, she did that herself thank you very much). She never expected him to do it along with her even as they planned, even as she grew older and tired of ceaseless hunters and fights. She never even expected to build a name, the joy of telling people that she was Magda Clanless and that she was here, present and to be respected still caught her now and then. She hasn’t grown tired of battle per say, that’s not unexpected. She is an Orc, she is a Warlock, conflict is in her blood, in her nature, in her names, she would never change this. She will die fighting and she will awaken in hell beside her beloved, bound to fight for an eternity. It will be heaven.  
Still, her feet grow sore and she has wandered enough for a whole clan, roots sound nice and she will grow them happily here.  
(She never expects a legacy.)

* * *

 

  
Magda Clanless lives in the woods with a devil, she is surprised how kind the world, how kind and beautiful the world is and how nothing is ever as she expects. A legacy, a child, a tiny daughter who looks so little like her parents and so much like them at the same time. It is midnight and in the palms of Magda’s hands the two, Magda and Bee coo over the tiny girl, furious to be in this world and wailing louder than anything they’ve heard.  
It’s not Orcish to give a child a name so soon but it is what Devil’s do, so a true name is whispered, the first thing tiny pointed ears hear beyond her own tantrum.   
She lives a year and gets a name from her mother at last, Clanless isn’t a burden she to pass on needs so her daughter is Magdasova in the human tradition, something from her and something given to her by her clan, a history however short

Columba Magdasova is five and she is holding her mothers hand, there is a line in the middle that doesn’t match her mother’s skin and Columba Magdasova who hasn’t yet learned about names or power or curses or people but will so very soon, is good at telling when things are different, she is clever at finding what doesn’t fit and trying to find the place where they would fit. She wonders what could leave a mark on her Mama, who's stronger than anyone and when Papa makes cuts disappear like paper in a fire. They're walking back home now though and she has to watch where she puts her fine little talons or else she'll fall and have to promise not to do something again so Papa will get rid of it, Columba Magdasova makes the decision to ask later and simply follows her parents home.

**Author's Note:**

> The pseudodragon familiar is named Fly after the insect and they helped raise Cal, Fly is a very good not-dragon and we love her


End file.
